So he would prefer to keep government closed purely because he wants to harm Democrats. His supporters will overlook it though, because they are absolutely fucking terrible people.

Is there like, a real source behind this? Is he a reporter, with a soon to arrive article? Because I heard that government are Democrats line before, along with the FBI one. I thought his aides already reminded him that Mueller doesn't stop if the Government shuts down.

Soupspoon wrote:Heck, even with no-one attacking the wall, it's probably going to stop being an effective wall for various other reasons.

The fact that an actual border wall would take literally years to survey (to avoid having it collapse, sink, crack, crumble, or otherwise fall) -- and Donald Trump intends to do it in six months? -- tells you everything you need to know about the border wall.

On another note, it really irritates me to see the press acting as if Trump is actually trying to govern, and wondering why {foo} or how {bar}, when the answers are drop-dead obvious if you substitute the premise that he is not trying to govern, but rather, playing in a sandbox. With us in it.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Heartfelt thanks from addams and from me - you really made a difference.

gd1 wrote:A stone wall is subject to acid. A steel wall can be cut through with a saw. Why not an imaginary wall? It's impossible to damage it. Much cheaper. Congress would approve of it. It's see through just as requested. Never rusts. Construction time is very short. No issues with land property rights. It can be protected by intellectual property rights. So many advantages...

The Emperor's New Wall? "Mr President, this wall is so transparent that only a very stable genius can see it".

gd1 wrote:A stone wall is subject to acid. A steel wall can be cut through with a saw. Why not an imaginary wall? It's impossible to damage it. Much cheaper. Congress would approve of it. It's see through just as requested. Never rusts. Construction time is very short. No issues with land property rights. It can be protected by intellectual property rights. So many advantages...

The Emperor's New Wall? "Mr President, this wall is so transparent that only a very stable genius can see it".

Transparency is very important.

Though in light of current news, is it possible that Putin is trying to foment division in the American populace? If that is the case, is there anything we can do about it?

gd1 wrote:Though in light of current news, is it possible that Putin is trying to foment division in the American populace?

It isn't just possible, it happened and continues to happen.

Well before the Trump era, the Russians set up hundreds of Facebook/Instagram etc. groups on every wing of the spectrum from Black Lives Matter to Blue Lives Matter to Trans-Rights to Christian Right etc. and had them basically all go to war against each other*.

They got hundreds of millions of clicks/views and no doubt acted to divide and polarise us. They also piled heavily in on the side of Trump - making efforts to stir up votes on the right and depress votes on the left.

Of course, 'you can't cheat an honest man' and the animosity had to already exist in society to some degree to be fomented in this way, but there's no doubt it had an effect - perhaps enough of an effect to get Trump over the line since he really didn't win by very much.

New Knowledge's report is due to be made public by the committee this week along with a separate report, also commissioned by the committee, that found the IRA [Russian trolling group] was active on every social media platform and sought to help Trump win. The Washington Post reported the details of the separate report, by Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm, on Sunday.

The separate report shows that Russians working at IRA divided Americans into key interest groups in order to target messaging, the Post reported.

The Russians focused on turning out conservatives to vote with messaging about gun rights and immigration, according to the Post, and spread misinformation to left-leaning African-American voters about how to vote and tried to undermine their faith in elections.

Many other groups, including Latinos, Muslims, Christians, gay men and women, liberals, Southerners and veterans, were also targeted by thousands of social media accounts controlled by Russians, the Post reported.

One of the authors of the report can be heard in a 3 hour interview on the Joe Rogan podcast if you really want to dive deep into the detail.

(*Obviously I'm not saying most such groups were Russian trolls - most were genuine in the sense of being run by Americans - but a good number of subversive and divisive ones were manufactured and directed by the IRA)

I agree. It's a saying, but like most sayings, it's not literally true.

Isn't it interesting though that, of all the things you could have commented about in my post, with all the ways you could have expanded upon it to greater inform me and others, instead your instinct was to seize upon a disagreement. In another context that could have sparked conflict despite us being 99% on the same side.

In terms of expansion, well, I've always been amazed at the comments section of teh graniaud or the beeb. As can be expected, they used to be far left (The Guardian) or center-left (BBC). As soon as the Euro-refugee crisis hit, all the comments suddenly shifted in tone to be vehemently against immigration, to the point where those articles never have comments open. Not sure if the Russians were in part behind that one.

Not helping things was the mass sex assault in Koln, specifically the reporting. It was all over social media on Jan 1st, yet neither the beeb or gran even mentioned anything until at least Jan 5th, which kiiiinda leads credence to conspiracy theories. After all, if the media is "clearly" trying to squash major anti-immigrant stories, what more minor anti-immigrant stories HAVE the squashed?

Is there an actual change in immigration to Europe that suddenly happened, a real crisis, or is that like America's own immigration "crisis" where nothing has much changed but suddenly conservatives are throwing conniption fits about "armies" of refugees "invading" through Mexico?

Is there an actual change in immigration to Europe that suddenly happened, a real crisis, or is that like America's own immigration "crisis" where nothing has much changed but suddenly conservatives are throwing conniption fits about "armies" of refugees "invading" through Mexico?

If I'm understanding the reading I've done and the various articles I recall correctly the grand upshot of the European Refugee Crisis looks like this:

A big chunk of those refugees are fleeing conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Most refugees stopping in neighboring Turkey (making Turkey's human rights issues somewhat more of a problem than they would be otherwise), Jordan and Lebanon, but others have moved on through to Europe. The E.U. Human Rights regulations (specifically the Dublin Regulation) that regulate where an asylum seeker can file for asylum (to prevent "Asylum Shopping", or finding the most favorable place to file for asylum in the E.U.) are making nations bordering the Mediterranean bear an outsized burden of processing and housing these refugees and they're a bit torqued off about it, some nations closing their borders to refugees or boats in the Mediterranean Sea (which is another flavor of crisis as boats filled with refugees are dying because they're not allowed to make port.)

In theory this closing of borders is against E.U. human rights regulations, however with Brexit testing the unity of the European Union, and many of the countries closing their borders were forced in to austerity measures by the E.U. (mostly by Germany as they have the lion's share of economic power in the E.U.), which increases the potential of a total breakup of the E.U. if they come down hard on violating those regulations.

We're in the traffic-chopper over the XKCD boards where there's been a thread-derailment. A Liquified Godwin spill has evacuated threads in a fourty-post radius of the accident, Lolcats and TVTropes have broken free of their containers. It is believed that the Point has perished.

The Grauniad far left? Left-leaning, maybe, but it by far aint no Socialist Worker.

Meanwhile the Beeb so often gets seen as too leftish by those on the right and too much in tune with The Establishment by the true Leftists. With the added 'bonus' that as only the party in power is… well… in power…, they generally report more about things that the HMGovernment is doing wrong and less so about what HMOpposition is thinking about doing wrong, so they're 'obviously' swung a bit the opposite of whatever the county is currently being run as... Granted that this has mostly resulted in them appearing to be leftward-looking over the last forty years.

The Grauniad far left? Left-leaning, maybe, but it by far aint no Socialist Worker.

The comments, not the paper itself.

Re: Euro Immigration Crisis

Bear in mind that that 1-1.5m asylum seekers per year? The US, with a smaller population than the EU, takes in that many legal immigrants every single year, and a similar number of illegal immigrants. More, actually, if we include the people deported and returning.

Bear in mind that that 1-1.5m asylum seekers per year? The US, with a smaller population than the EU, takes in that many legal immigrants every single year, and a similar number of illegal immigrants. More, actually, if we include the people deported and returning.

You know theres a difference between asylum seekers and all immigrants right?

CorruptUser wrote:Sure, yes, but not much difference between illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.

Maybe between those entering illegally and asylum seekers (both have to arrive at the border). And that number is an even smaller portion of the total immigrants the US sees. Your post comparing asylum seeker numbers with overall immigration is a nonesense comparisson.

The US has around 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants, and that's with the amnesties and naturalizations and so forth. So how many illegal immigrants do you think the US took in each year? It's about the same as the number of refugees Europe took in, only for decades instead of a couple of years.

CorruptUser wrote:Sure, yes, but not much difference between illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.

Oh! Yes, there is!

Spoiler:

My own lovely child was an illegal immigrant in Europe.She was not fleeing anything, other than being, just, another young woman making her way in the U.S.After ten years she is now legal and living happily in Europe.

Life is, just, an exchange of electrons; It is up to us to give it meaning.

We are all in The Gutter.Some of us see The Gutter.Some of us see The Stars.by mr. Oscar Wilde.

Those that want to Know; Know.Those that do not Know; Don't tell them.They do terrible things to people that Tell Them.

CorruptUser wrote:The US has around 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants, and that's with the amnesties and naturalizations and so forth. So how many illegal immigrants do you think the US took in each year? It's about the same as the number of refugees Europe took in, only for decades instead of a couple of years.

Estimate (wikipedia, granted) is 6-7 million illegal entries at about half a million a year.

I'm not sure, but it feels like the single point of failure here might not be Trump, but Mitch Mcconnell. He won't bring a bill to the floor because he says it won't pass. Unless he's got a crystal ball he doesn't know that. If the senate passed it and Trump vetoed it they could override him (because if they didn't it might hurt the senate members who voted against doing so in the next elections). I might be missing something though.

Huh? Naturalizations? What are you talking about, in the context of illegal immigrants?

Marriage to citizens, etc

It is an incredibly difficult (and lengthy) process for an undocumented immigrant to end up with citizenship. My friend who overstayed his visa has been married to a citizen for over ten years and is still only eligible for a green card.

gd1 wrote:I'm not sure, but it feels like the single point of failure here might not be Trump, but Mitch Mcconnell. He won't bring a bill to the floor because he says it won't pass. Unless he's got a crystal ball he doesn't know that. If the senate passed it and Trump vetoed it they could override him (because if they didn't it might hurt the senate members who voted against doing so in the next elections). I might be missing something though.

It's both of them - both the president and the republican senate are responsible for this. You're right - they can easily choose to vote on the same bill they agreed to before this fiasco started, the same bill Nancy Pelosi put on the house floor. But that would complicate matters with the president, and they're all scared of doing that. It doesn't help that Trump won't say what he's willing to sign on, or that he's a giant baby unable to talk with people if he has a tantrum.

CorruptUser wrote:The US has around 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants, and that's with the amnesties and naturalizations and so forth.

Huh? Naturalizations? What are you talking about, in the context of illegal immigrants?

Marriage to citizens, etc

I don't think naturalization means what you seem to think it does.

If you are a visa-holding non-citizen married to a US citizen, and your visa expires, you are not automatically naturalized (i.e., endowed with citizenship). You still have to leave and apply for authorized re-entry at a US consulate in your country of citizenship. This happened to my brother-in-law. When his visa expired, he had to return to India and wait several months while his application for legal authorization to return was processed, even though he was married to my sister, a US citizen.

Naturalization is a long, complicated, rigorous process. And even if you are married to a US citizen, you might not qualify to become a US citizen, especially if the US government determines that you were ever here illegally. They really frown on that sort of thing. And all isn't forgiven just because you are the spouse and/or parent of US citizens.

My brother-in-law didn't want to become a US citizen, because although the US allows people to hold joint citizenship, India doesn't, and he didn't want to give up his Indian citizenship. He would have preferred to remain a citizen of India for the rest of his life. He didn't apply for US naturalization until he decided that voting against Donald Trump was his sacred duty as a decent human being.

gd1 wrote:I'm not sure, but it feels like the single point of failure here might not be Trump, but Mitch Mcconnell. He won't bring a bill to the floor because he says it won't pass. Unless he's got a crystal ball he doesn't know that. If the senate passed it and Trump vetoed it they could override him (because if they didn't it might hurt the senate members who voted against doing so in the next elections). I might be missing something though.

It's both of them - both the president and the republican senate are responsible for this. You're right - they can easily choose to vote on the same bill they agreed to before this fiasco started, the same bill Nancy Pelosi put on the house floor. But that would complicate matters with the president, and they're all scared of doing that. It doesn't help that Trump won't say what he's willing to sign on, or that he's a giant baby unable to talk with people if he has a tantrum.

Also, the pictures the BBC has been using for a while with both of them with their mouths open has been annoying me to no end. Wouldn't be hard to use photos where they aren't halfway through talking. No one looks good in that shot, you're not making any points.

Crabtree's bludgeon: “no set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated”

Democrats in the House passed another bill to re-open parts of the government, but like past attempts, it is expected to fail in the Republican-led Senate.

The new stopgap bill proposes to re-open the government through 28 February.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take up any legislation that does not have the president's approval, and has accused Democrats of wasting time.

As a citizen of a country that has a unicameral parliament, I don't understand: what is the purpose of having a congress/senate legislation system? Seems to just be there to delay passing laws even longer.

You have one party controlling congress, and a different party controlling the senate. You really expect opposing parties with opposing values to cooperate?

That situation is theoretically possible here, a 40% party and a 40% party unable to get a majority vote from minority parties, unable to pass the national budget. If enough time passes with a stalemate in parliament, our government shuts down, but the Governor-General (or the Queen) is expected to step in and call for another election.

That was literally the reasoning behind it. Basically, the founding fathers were really cynical about democracy and most of the decisions they made were about trying to protect the system from irrational voters, and so at every turn they found a way to make the system less democratic.

That was literally the reasoning behind it. Basically, the founding fathers were really cynical about democracy and most of the decisions they made were about trying to protect the system from irrational voters, and so at every turn they found a way to make the system less democratic.

I guess my actual question is: is there an advantage I'm missing?

NZ used to have a bicameral system about 130 or so years ago but voted it scrapped at some point.

Representatives are elected by relatively small districts and are, in theory, the representatives of the people. Senators originally were appointed by state governments, two per state regardless of population, though are now also directly represented. So the chambers of Congress are empowered by different mechanisms and represent different interests.